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PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S DEATH. 






DISCOUESE 



DELIVERED IN THE 






PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN CALDWELL, N. J., 



ON THE DAY OF NATIONAL MOURNING, 



JUNE 1st, 1865, 



BY REV. I. N. SPRAGUE, Pastor. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



NEWARK, N. J.: 

PRINTED AT THE DAILY ADVERTISER OFFICE. 
I860. 



\ 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S DEATH. 



DISCOUESE 



DELIVERED IN THE 



PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN CALDWELL, N. J., 



ON THE DAY OF NATIONAL MOURNING, 



JUNE 1st, 1865, 



BY REV. I. N. SPRAGUE, Pastor. 



PUBLISHED BY KEQUEST. 



NEWARK, N. J.: 

FEINTED AT THE DALLY ADVERTISER OFFICE. 
1865. 



£"4 51 



8 



•oqG 



Messrs. Nathaniel S. Crake, Zenas C. Cbane, L. C. Gboveb, Esq., N. O. 
Baldwin, Dr. Personet and others— 

I am unwilling that the discourse, requested for publication, should go forth 

to the world, without saying that it was prepared only for my own people. 

Such as it is, I send it forth, hoping that it may he a little leaven to assist in 

leavening the whole lump. 

Yours, &c., 

I. N. S, 




SERMON. 



Genesis 1 , 7-11. And Joseph went up to bury his father ; and with him 
went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders 
of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his 
father's house ; only their little on^s, and their flocks, and their herds, they 
left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with him both chariots and 
horsemen ; and it was a very great company. And they came to the threshing 
floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan ; and there they mourned with a great 
and very sore lamentation ; and he made a mourning for his father seven days. 
And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in 
the floor of Atad, they said. This is a grfevous mourning to the Egyptians ; 
whereupon the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. 

That was a grand and royal funeral procession, which 
followed the good old patriarch Joseph to his burial. In that 
procession there were the chief ofiicers of Pharaoh's throne, 
and all the elders of the land of Egypt, as well as the descend- 
ants of the Patriarch himself. They went up with chariots 
and horsemen, a very great company, marching onward for 
hundreds of miles, till they came to the family burying-place 
in the land of Canaan. The nations of the land saw this 
grand procession as it passed along ; they were eye-witnesses 
of the great and very sore lamentations for the dead, and 
with no little fellow-feeling of sympathy they said, This is a 
very grievous mourning to the Egyptians. The record of that 
memorable funeral procession will be read as long as the 
world shall last. 

Within the few past weeks we have witnessed just such an 
honorable funeral procession, marching through the land,' 
attracting universal attention j and calling out the heartfelt 



sympathies and the sincere mourning and lamentation of mil- 
lions. When Abraham Lincoln died a nation mourned. 
They mourned not simply because of the manner of his death, 
but because of the fad of his death. All felt that a great and 
a good man had fallen — great in his very goodness and by 
that goodness, having won his way to the confidence and 
hearts of the people, as one raised up by a special providence 
for a great and special work. No man since the days of 
Washington was ever so enshrined in the hearts of the people 
as Lincoln. His patient and noble bearing, his kind, con- 
ciliating spirit, his high sense of justice, his true patriotism 
and unambitious aims were coming to be seen and known, and 
they were commanding a high respect from the manly portion 
even of his political enemies. When the fiendish spirit of 
rebellion reached him in the form of assassination, the nation's 
heart was thrilled with homor. We hoped, for the sake of 
our common humanity, that the blow was an act of private 
vengeance ; none of us dreamed that it could have been de- 
liberately and maturely planned by men in authority, who 
had made such loud boasts of high and noble sentiments and 
deeds of chivalry, and claiming a superior manhood, and who 
had set themselves up as the pattern people of the world. 

Lincoln died, the nation mourned over him and carried 
him to his burial. It was a long journey from the death 
scene to the grave. The solemn procession passed from state 
to state, and from city to city, and wherever it passed, by 
night or by day, tens of thousands were found standing by 
the wayside, to do honor to the remains of the distinguished 
dead, by such emblems of sorrow and mourning, as, in their 
profusion, have never been seen at the funeral of any one 
man since the world began. Wherever the ark of the dead 
rested for a few hours, thousands upon thousands crowded 
forward -to gaze a moment upon the countenance of the mar- 
tyred President, and those that did this will tell it to their 
children and their children's children, as a memorable event 



i 



in their history, that will gather interest as time passes on, 
Our beloved, our honored, our martyred President now sleeps 
in the family burying-ground of his former home, and to that 
honored tomb will pilgrimages be made by a loving, grateful 
people, as they have long been made to the tomb of Wash- 
ington. While these funeral scenes have been passing among 
us, the nations of the world have looked on and said, Truly 
this was a grievous mourning^ which the American 'peojile have, 
made for Abraham Ldncoln. 

It is too soon to make a fair and honest and just estimate 
ot what Lincoln was worth to us and the world. I cast my 
mind forward some twenty -five years, when the dust of our 
national strife shall all be blown away; when old political 
parties and prejudices have been laid aside ; when the present 
generation shall have passed off, and when the union of these 
states shall be consolidated as it never has been ; when society 
is settled from its long convulsions, when the forms of indus- 
try are running smoothly in their proper channels, and when 
the shadowing wings of our national eagle shall afford shelter 
and protection to all the oppressed, and when God's crowning 
blessing shall bring us a glorious prosperity, in connection 
with our established republican institutions; and from that 
point of time, I take my stand and look back and ponder and 
study the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. A genera- 
tion hence, who will there be that will not do him honor ? 
Who that will not then see that he was a chosen vessel of 
God, chosen out of the people to live and labor and die for his 
country's good, and that his life and labors and death have 
all been made subservient, under the providence of God, to 
the very best good of his country and the world ? Twenty- 
five years hence, and probably much sooner, all the sore 
spots of the subjugated South will be healed over, slavery 
will be dead beyond the possibility of a resurrection, aris- 
tocracy will have disappeared under the necessity of a personal 
application to business, and all sectional prejudices will be 



swallowed up in the tide of a growing prosperity, and a gen- 
eral national assimilation character. History then will give 
a truthful and impartial view of the war, through which we 
have just passed, of its causes, of its progress, and of the 
character and acts of the men who have performed distin- 
guished parts in it. What then will history record of our 
martyred President ? 

I apprehend that in these future years, when calm and can- 
did judgment looks over men and events and results, this very 
President will be the man whom the nation will delight to 
honor — that he will be the man of all our Presidents, who 
will stand the nearest to Washington in public estimation, if 
indeed he does not dim the glory of that great and good man. 
Washington is appropriately styled the Father of his country. 
It was under the leadership of his wise, patient and persever- 
ing efforts, in the camp and the field and the council chamber, 
in times that tried men's souls, that we came successfully out 
of the war of the Eevolution, and were able to take our stand 
among the nations of the earth. His name is and mud he 
embalmed in the memories of the American people, ajid will 
always be a dear and honored and precious name. Other 
honored names have been enrolled in the list of our 
Presidents, but the times since have witnessed very little 
perilous public agitation. When Lincoln was brought for- 
ward from the obscurity of his quiet private life, the very 
nation was reeling and staggering, as under the blow of an 
assassin, aimed at its very life. His progress from his quiet 
home to the scat of Government was beset with perils. The 
nation waited in breathless attention to hear what were his 
first words, when he should speak with authority, and when 
he did speak, there was a freer breathing, because there was 
some hope of still preserving the life of the government. But 
it was a Herculean task that he took upon his shoulders. 
Who of us then felt sure that there was any man living that 
could perform successfully what lie undertook? But most 



I 



successfully has he performed it. Amid difficulties and dan- 
gers, which no previous occupant of the Presidential chair 
ever encountered, he has kept firm hold of the helm of gov- 
ernment, and he was not called away till he had brought the 
ship of state to a safe anchorage and placed the nation in a 
higher and safer position than it ever occupied before. With 
the last gun fired at Appomatox Court House, that position 
was assumed, and Europe and the world saw that henceforth 
we were a nation, and destined to be no mean nation among 
the nations of the earth. How quickly, when the march of 
. triumph commenced, was this long and vexatious war brought 
to an end ! Truly at the latter end a short work has the Lord 
made of it. The country is saved, the government is estab- 
lished, and republican institutions are secure for this genera- 
tion and for generations to come, and Abraham Lincoln is 
at least our second Washington. Thanks be unto God, that 
he gave us such a man and that man, to bring us safely through 
the perils and dangers of times more trying than the times of 
the Eevolution, that gave birth to our national existence. 

History will make the record of Lincoln, that he was a good 
man and a great man in honest-hearted goodness. That he had 
great native energy is evident from the fact that he was a self- 
made man. He was one from the great mass of the people. 
He rose by labor, by study, by perseverance. He stood out 
among the people, a sound, honest, solid man, and when the 
nation wanted such a man to hold the helm of State, they 
selected him. They were not disappointed in him. He was 
all and more than they had expected. His goodness of heart 
and honesty of character he carried with him into his public 
office. 

He was wise as luell as good. He looked into public affairs 
carefully. He weighed them long and well, and when his 
decision was once formed, it was a calm and deliberate and 
well settled judgment. Never moving with the rashness of 
haste, he was not obliged to retrace his steps and do his work 



over. As we now look back upon his work and see how well 
it has been done, we shall find it difficult to point out, in any 
particular, wherein it could have been done better. 

He ivas a true iKitriot. Times of peril and agitation in pub- 
lic affairs are the opportunities which are seized upon by un- 
principled and ambitious men to advance their own interests, 
and grasp the reins of power. A ISTapoleon would have made 
the effort to do this, in the circumstances in which we have 
been placed. There were men who prophesied that Washing- 
ton and Jackson and Lincoln would make this effort, but they 
never did. They were all honest patriots, ruling not for them- 
selves, but for their country, not seeking their own interests, 
but their country's good. Such true loyalty to the govern- 
ment and the nation ranks next, in virtuous excellence, in my 
estimation, to loyalty to God. 

Lincoln will he regarded in history as the true father of Ameri- 
can Liberty. Our fathers in the great Ee volution were wise 
and good men ; under the circumstances they did the very best 
they could in laying the foundations and erecting the pillars 
of our national government, on the principles set forth in the 
Declaration of Independence. They planted the Tree of 
Liberty and its roots struck deep down into the soil, and its 
trunk rose in majesty and beauty, attracting the attention of 
the nations. But alas, they left standing by it the tree of 
slavery, then a little stunted, scraggy shrub, which they verily 
thought would wither and die of itself, supposing it could not 
live in such a soil as ours. But weeds will grow in the ac- 
cursed soil of this earth in spite of human culture to keep 
them down. The good tree grew and flourished and spread 
abroad its branches, and the oppressed of the nations took 
shelter under it. But the bad tree grew also ; it ' struck its 
roots deep down to get nourishment and strength ; it reared 
up a tall and fearless head ; it stretched forth its strong arms, 
and grasped the tree of liberty and threatened to crush out its 
very life. The God of nations looked on. The time of rctri- 



9 

bution for national sin had fully come ; and God determined 
to wipe out together the sin and the stain of our nation, and 
for our punishment and as a lesson of warning to the world, 
this wiping out must be in blood. As the strife waged on- 
ward, it was not in the heart of our Chief Magistrate to lay 
the axe to the root of the evil tree, only as a matter of neces- 
sity to preserve the national life. God brought about this 
necessity. Our. President saw it, even before the people saw 
it. Having calmly waited the fulness of time, he then acted 
with firmness and decision, saying, hew down the evil tree, 
and its branches, and leave not a stump or a root. By that 
one act, a race of nearly four millions took their places, for 
the first time, under the shelter of the tree of liberty, coming 
out from a state of bondage to the ownership of themselves, 
their wives and their children. The black people of America 
will never forget the name of Abraham Lincoln. It will be 
told to their children and their childrens' children, and their 
little ones will be taught to lisp it, as the one name, the dearest 
and most significant to them of all earthly names. Our hon- 
ored President went down to his grave with the precious bless- 
ings of millions of the poor resting on his head. Can we not 
feel that our Savior has already said to him. Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto the least of these my brethren^ ye have done it 
unto me. 

Abraham 'Lincoln was, in the judgment of charity, a true 
believer in Christ. He was the only one of all our Presidents, 
that entered upon his ofiicial life, asking publicly the prayers 
of the people. He was known to be a man of praying habits, 
and to be governed by Christian principles, and to fill his place 
in the house of God on the Sabbath. When personally ad- 
dressed by way of friendly enquiry, he promptly answered^ 
that he did love Jesus. What tremendous influences were bear- 
ing on him daily to make him realize the great truths of re- 
ligion, and to drive him to find refuge and help in God ! He 
knew that he was surrounded by constant perils ; he was 

2 



10 

warned that evil men were lurking for his life ; his immense 
responsibilities, connected with a sense of religion, would lead 
him to look upward, as he did, for wisdom and direction. 

As a fitting, crowning act to all his previous life, he was laid 
as a sacrifice upon the altar of his country. It is and should be 
to us, a humiliating fact, that we, as a nation, had committed 
sins so great and grievous, that God felt it necessary to chas- 
tise us with sore afflictions and heavy judgments. "We had 
become proud and vain and boastful and worldly and oppres- 
sive, and we were the more wicked, because we endeavored to 
justify ourselves in our evil course, by Bible precepts and ex- 
amples. Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord ? and 
the Lord did visit for them. Wars have been among the 
prominent things, which the Lord has used, through all the 
world's history, as a rod of chastisement for national and gen- 
eral sins ; and it is a principle of Divine Providence that wars 
are made to uproot and destroy the very sins for which a 
nation is punished, or, if the sin is not repented of and given 
up, then the nation itself is destroyed, and another people is 
raised up to come in and take their place. National sins are 
held with great tenacity. They become woven into the social 
habits and customs of the people so that evil is called good and 
good evil. To root out such sins and make a people see that 
they are sins, and be willing to abandon them, God smites 
with blow upon blow. To accomplish the Divine purposes of 
this war, it could not be short, as we hoped it would be. It 
had to be lengthened out, till we could see and feel what God 
meant by it. Nor could these purposes be accomplished at 
little cost to our worldly interests. God meant to make it so 
costly that we should feel it in our purses and our family 
circles. Millions, that a man could not count in his life-time, 
have been expended, leaving a heavy burden of debt, that we 
and our children and our childrens' children must work out. 
Kivers of blood have been shed — scores of thousands of lives, 
scores upon scores have been sacrificed. The young men, the 



11 

flower of the country, have fallen, the land is filled with 
widows and orphans. The blow has fallen upon all parts of 
the land, but heaviest where there was the deepest guilt. 
Upon this altar of sacrifice, as it were to make atonement for 
national sins, many distinguished victims have been laid, of 
the choicest and best in the land, just such victims, as God 
required in olden times in acts of punishment and worship. 
But the measure of atonement was not complete, till there was 
laid on that altar a victim greater and better and more distin- 
guished than all others. As the sacrifices of olden times ended 
by the offering up of Jesus upon the cross to complete and 
finish and perfect God's great work of redemption, so God has 
brought our national sacrifices to an end, by demanding a last 
and best victim, in the most honored and best beloved Chief 
Magistrate of the land. It is our earnest prayer that this may 
suffice, and that God now will turn away His anger from us 
and give us once more the blessings of peace and love. 

The more I ponder upon it, the more I think that this last, 
greatest sacrifice, which has made all the nation weep and 
mourn, was needful to carry out God's plan of mercy toward 
us ; — that on the whole, it was a fitting, crowning act to wind 
up the tragedy of war, and introduce the blessings of peace ; — 
that if Lincoln himself could have known what would be 
the great good arising out of his death in the time and manner 
of it, he would have said, out of the fulness of his benevolence 
and patriotism, let me he laid as a victim upon the altar ; let my 
life he offered up for the henefit of the nation. 

I would not presume to put any human being on a level 
with our blessed Eedeemer in any sense, for He is higher and 
holier and greater and better than any or all created things, 
yet I must say, that the more I think of it, the more I can 
see a striking analogy between the death of Christ for the 
world and the death of Lincoln for his country, in this, that as 
the death of Christ resulted in great good to the world, so the 
death of Lincoln will result in great good to the nation. Both 



12 

were put to death by wicked men from wicked motives, and 
both, events are over-ruled, in the providence of God, to accom- 
plish objects the very opposite from what were intended by 
their perpetrators. Evil men dig a 2^ii for their neighbors, and 
fall into it themselves. 

The national good accompUshed by the death of Lincoln, 
is already beginning to appear, and I apprehend it has only 
just begun to work. 

It has toned down and softened the hitter feeling of the South 

towards the North and towards the government. ' This influence 

is already seen and felt. The Southern people were bitter, 

and they were ready for almost any thing, lawful or unlawful, 

to accomplish their ends, but they were not so far gone in the 

scale of depravity, as to lose all sense of humanity. The 

assassination of Lincoln, and by the hired tool of their own 

authorities, touched them in their vulnerable spot It thrilled 

them with a sense of horror and indignation, as no other event 

could have done. If our President had been captured or slain 

in honorable warfare, they would have rejoiced, for it would 

have worked to their advantage ; but to have him murdered 

as he was murdered, and especially with the virtual comphcity 

of the whole chivalrous South in that murder, was too much. 

It softened instead of hardening^ them. It touched to the 

quick all that was human in them. Their better feelings and 

their strong sympathies leaped to the surface at once. The 

South is softened. Its bitterness is passing away, and with 

the exception of some of the leading spirits in rebellion, it 

will all pass away in time ; and with slavery removed, which 

has been the sole origin of all sectional feeling, the Union will 

be bound together in closer bonds than ever. These leading 

spirits I have no desire to conciliate. They have sown the 

wind, let them reap the whirlwind. They are subjugated as 

they ought to be ; for the good of the country in all future 

time let them stay so, without an effort to raise them from the 

depth into which they have fallen. 



13 

The death of Lincoln has brought out to the light and to the 
exea'aiion of the civilized world, the true spirit and character of 
the rebellion. When the news first reached us that the Presi- 
dent was shot, all felt and said that it was an act of private 
hate or revenge on the part of some rebel desperado. It was 
an act so mean and base, so contrary to all the laws of civilized 
warfare, that no one thought of charging it upon any but the 
perpetrator himself. But as the deed began to unfold itself, 
it exposed to our view the coils of a deadly serpent, which had 
been lying concealed, watching the opportunity and gathering 
strength to give one mighty spring and throttle out the very 
life of the government. No one intervention of Divine Provi- 
dence in our behalf was ever more manifest, than that which 
defeated this gigantic rebel plot of wholesale assassination. If 
it had not been that the Lord was on our side, the government 
and nation would have been swallowed up quick. The key 
to that plot was the key to the whole Pandora's box of Con- 
federate depravity. The mystery of iniquity now stands out 
to our view in its true character. The proof is clear before 
the world, that the rebellion embodied in itself the most con- 
summate and deliberate schemes of wickedness, so deeply dyed 
in Satanic cunning and depravity, that the actors must have 
had special and unusual help from the council chamber of 
Pandemonium. The deliberate shooting down and starvation 
of our prisoners, the plot to steal in and burn our Northern 
cities and shipping, the plot to desolate the cities and the coun- 
try by spreading widely the yellow fever and small pox, and 
by a special messenger, to introduce these foul diseases to the 
Presidential mansion, and the plot to assassinate the heads of 
government, were all in keeping with each other, and with the 
character of the rebellion. No wonder that men, who could 
plot such schemes of deliberate wickedness, could introduce 
into their Congress a bill, declaring that they were justified 
" in putting prisoners to death without special cause, that they 
had a right to use poisoned weapons and to assassinate. After 



14 

this let no man speak of Southern chivalry as a high-toned 
manhood, and only with the utmost contempt for its meanness 
and depravity. It is a fitting end to such a chivalry, that it 
should be taken in the last ditch, disguised in and even dis- 
gracing the garments of an old woman. The great rebellion, 
its principles and its actors now stand before the world in their 
true light. In all future time, it will be regarded as it should 
be, as having been begun without reason, as being carried on 
on principles outraging all humanity, and as having come to 
an end well befitting its principles and its aims. 

The death of Lincoln, together with other developments of 
the true character and spirit of the rebellion, is directly calcu- 
lated to extinguish all Norihern sympathy for the South and its 
cause. The South, counted on that sympathy, and they have 
had so much of it as seriously to embarrass the government. 
In all the Northern States, the South has had apologists and 
defenders, who have claimed to act in good faith and in ac- 
cordance with truth and good morals. But after the develop- 
ments that have been made, who can utter one word of apology 
for the South now, or who desires to do it, that wishes to retain 
his own feelings of self-respect, or any respect for his manhood 
from his fellow-men. I can sympathize with a man, who has 
committed even a great crime, if I can see that he has been 
deceived and misled, and acted conscientiously, though under 
a mistake ; but when I see that he has acted with deliberation, 
and knowledge and evil purpose ; acted with savage barbarity, 
with malice and murder in his heart, showing what his heart 
is by making a drinking cup out of the skull of his slain 
enemy, deliberately starving and shooting down the helpless 
within his power, purposely spreading malignant and fatal 
disease, firing cities at midnight filled with a slumbering popu- 
tion, and using the assassin's weapon against the good and the 
great, then my sympathy is at an end. I could have no sym- 
pathy for such a man, if he had been my best friend ; much 
less could I sympathize with the cause and the principles, 



b 



15 

which have made him the wretch that he is, without making 
myself a partaker of his crime. 

During the war party spirit has run high. Men have gone 
to extremes. Things have been said and done, which, I think, 
will never be said and done again, at least in our day. I look 
now for the intensity of party spirit to be abated. Washing- 
ton warned us against that spirit as one of the chief dangers 
of our land, and never did we need to take note of that warn- 
ing more than at the present day. Carried to the extreme that 
spirit leads to division, to rebellion, to public murder and pri- 
vate assassination. 

The death of Lincoln, and its accompanying developments, 
will make it easier for the Union to he reconstructed. We always 
trouble ourselves needlessly, when we strive to solve knotty 
questions before the proper time. Sufficient unto the day is 
the evil thereof We have been anxious to know what could 
be done with the negroes if they were freed ? How could the 
South ever be conciliated, if it was subjugated ? How could 
the Union of the States be reconstructed so as to give us the 
promise of lasting peace and harmony ? Divine Providence 
is just beginning to give us a plain and manifest solution to 
these enquiries. It is God's province to solve these questions, 
and he has let the war continue just long enough and to come 
to an end in just such a manner as to give them an easy solu- 
tion. The South wants all the emancipated slaves as laborers, 
and they will be more profitable to the South and the whole 
country as free, than they have ever been as slaves. The 
question will naturally arise in time, whether they shall have 
the privilege of the ballot box, and that question, in its proper 
time, will find its own solution. Three-fifths of them have 
always voted, not in person, but virtually in their masters, and 
their votes have always been cast in the interests of the aris- 
tocracy and for their own perpetual slavery. When they 
come to vote in person, they will vote in one solid mass for 
freedom and republican institutions^ And it is prophesied by 



16 

able men that tlie time will come wlien their vote will be 
needed, to counteract the foreign and Popish influence, that is 
gaining such a strong foothold in our country. It is conjec- 
tured that our next internal national struggle will be with this 
foreign Popish influence. 

As to conciliating the South, they are conciliated. The 
masses of the South are more quiet and peaceable and better 
satisfied to-day under the national government, than they 
were under their sectional government, and they have now 
more freedom of opinion and of speech than they had before 
the war. During the last two years two-thirds of their own 
army were deserters. They had lost faith and heart in their 
own cause and in their rulers. They had learned that the 
Northern armies were not Goths and Vandals. The work of 
conciliation has progressed beyond all expectation, and it will 
go on, and the time is not far distant when the conciliation in 
the masses will be complete. 

As to the rabid, fire-eating secessionists, the fomentors and 
leaders in the rebellion, it is neither necessary or policy for the 
government to turn aside an inch from the even tenor of its 
way to conciliate them. They are conquered, subjugated ; 
they obliged us to put them in that position ; let them stay 
there ; let them feel that the strong arm of government is 
over them. Give them to understand that the government 
can go on and be maintained without them and in spite of 
them. Let the pardoning power be exercised as extensively 
as may be safe and best for the country, and if these rabid 
men submit and behave themselves, let them have privileges ; 
and if not let them be dealt with according to their deserts 
like other criminals. 

That public justice, the good of the country and the safety 
of the government will demand that punishment be inflicted 
in the case of some prominent leading men, to its full extent, 
will, I think, be the general sentiment of the nation. I hold 
strongly to the constitution. I would give every man his 



• 17 

rights under the constitution, till he forfeits those rights by his 
own act. The loyal man I would protect in all his interests, 
according to the constitution. The man guilty of treason has 
lost his rights ; he has no rights at all, except the right to a 
fair trial and a proper punishment for his crime. The consti- 
tution makes treason a capital offence. It describes that offence 
to be levying war against the government, and it j&xes the 
punishment to be death. Let the constitution be maintained 
and carried out. The leaders and prominent actors in the re- 
bellion, I would arraign before the proper tribunals. I would 
give them a fair and impartial trial, and if they are found 
guilty, I would inflict just the punishment which the constitu- 
tion demands. I would do this to show that our constitution 
is not a dead letter, to make the strong impression on every 
mind in the nation that treason is a crime — a crime that cannot, 
that must not be compromised ; — to be an example of warning, 
that all the Jeff Davises of future generations might see what 
would -be their sure end. When John Brown levied war 
against the State of Virginia, and when he was tried and sen- 
tenced and hung, the voice of the country said it was right, 
though there was a general feeling that he was at least a 
monomaniac. It would take the guilt of ten thousand John 
Browns to equal the criminality of a Davis or Lee, or Beaure- 
gard, or Benjamin or Breckenridge. There is an old Latin 
proverb. Fiat jusiitia, mat caelum, " let justice be done though 
the heavens fall." 

Before the death of our martyr President, there was a gene- 
ral feeling and quite pervading, to pass too slightly over this 
great crime of the rebellion — to make very easy terms with 
all in high and low standing, on the simple condition of their 
ceasing to fight. I thought I could see danger in that feeling, 
and I thought I could see a Divine Providence in the sudden 
and awful death of our President, to open the eyes of the 
nation to a sense of justice and safety, and bring it to a better 
feeling. It seemed to need just that act to thrill through the 

3 



18 ■ . 

national heart and nerve that heart up to be willing to give 
crime its just and proper desert. We are not a vindictive 
people. I would hang no man for revenge, but I would do it 
as a terror to evil doers and for the future safety of the 
country. 

That terrible act of assassination, by which our enemies 
thought to destroy our government, has made that (jovernment 
strong — stronger than it ever was. The wheels of govern- 
mental power were not clogged a moment, and as they moved 
on, they moved on with more majesty and with a stronger 
support than before. That act of assassination decided the 
policy of reconstruction ; that no Confederate act or officer in 
any State would be acknowledged. It blotted out the last four 
years of Southern legislation, and put in force all the old laws 
and courts, which Confederate authority had displaced. It 
gave security to the country, that the reconstruction of our 
national union would be right, and that the union would be 
stronger than it had ever been. Thanks be unto God for 
giving us such a President as Lincoln for the last four 
years, and for giving us such a President ■ as Johnson for the 
four years to come. The one has gone to his grave, enshrined 
in the loving hearts of a great people and with the universal 
respect of all foreign nations for his goodness and wisdom ; 
and the other, I trust, will administer government, wisely tem- 
pering judgment with mercy, and receiving a cordial support 
from all the loyal classes of the community. 

The war, the great war of the nineteenth century, is over. 
Peace once more spreads her balmy wings over the land. The 
country breathes freely. The armies are disbanding, and the 
men who have fought our battles and won our victories and 
saved our government, are coming to their homes to resume 
the peaceful pursuits of industry. Agitation is over, party 
strife is abating, the government works freelyj and there is a 
grand prospect before us of a more glorious union and a more 
extended and influential prosperity than we have ever seen. 



19 

From this time onward, true democracy in governments will 
demand the attention of the world. For one, I rejoice in 
these grand results with unspeakable joy. I have lived to see 
the end of the great rebellion. I have lived to see the grand- 
est triumph of law and order and government that the world 
ever saw ; and with me it is a matter of profound satisfaction 
that, personally, I have contributed what I could to bring 
about this grand result. I have seen it stated that the re- 
bellion could never have got a standing, without the aid of the 
Southern ministers of religion. By their countenance and 
support they contributed just that moral influence that gave it 
that standing. We know too that the ministers of religion 
exerted no small influence in the great Eevolution to bring 
about the fact of our national existence, by lifting up their 
voices loudly in favor of liberty and independence. Our very 
town bears the honored name of a martyred chaplain, who, 
for his bold and unflinching championship of our colonial 
rights, was the special object of British hate, and there is every 
evidence that he fell by the hand of an assassin, hired by 
British gold. I am happy to know also, that in the struggle 
for national life, which has just drawn to a successful close, 
the ministers of religion at the North have come forward 
manfully and thrown the whole weight of their influence in 
favor of that cause, which God has now vindicated and pro^ 
claimed to the world as the right ; and I am happy to feel to- 
day, that I am permitted to reckon myself among the number 
who have done this. I have aimed to give the government in 
its hour of peril my warm and hearty support. I have felt 
for it, in private and in public ; I have preached for it ; I have 
acted for it. If I had been younger and in full health, I 
should have performed for it a ministry in the tented field. I 
have done what I could. , I am unspeakably glad that I have 
not been silent. God and my own conscience would not let 
me be silent. I should have felt thatj under the circumstances, 
silence was akin to treason. What little I could do I havd 



20 ^- 

done to encourage the soldier or comfort his wife and family 
at home, to strengthen the government, by advocating for it a 
strong and loyal support, and I have done this with my whole 
heart. And now when I look abroad and see the country in 
peace and growing harmony, with all its old grievances, North 
and South, vanishing away, with the glowing prospects before ■ 
us of a well grounded peace and prosperity, I am full of 
gladness and joy and thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father, 
who hath wrought for us this great salvation. 



LB S '12 



